2. Mad Max: Fury Road
Truly original world building is hard. Sure, a film maker can take inspiration from an existing novel, comic book or TV; but dropping your audience into a world they’ve not seen before is never easy and must be increasingly difficult today when every other release looks the same bar the costume the characters are wearing. Re-enter George Miller and just watch how effortless it can seem when done well.
If anyone knows the world of Mad Max it’s of course Miller. Writer and Director of the original trilogy from 1979 to 1985, Miller created an action movie icon from his hero Max Rockatansky; loving husband and father who saw everything taken away from him on the edge of an apocalypse and who would go on to wander the desert in search of salvation where gasoline became the new currency. Armed with a $150 million budget (standard by today’s standards but skyrocketed from what he had in the 80s, even adjusted for inflation) Mad Max: Fury Road expands on the world Miller showed us in the previous films and seamlessly fits this new chapter into where we left off in 1985.
Read the rest of Rohan Morbey’s ★ ★ ★ ★ review here.
And don’t forget that whole video in-studio debate on it, too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWWtOQOZSTI
Originally published July 13, 2015. Updated April 15, 2018.
